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Comment by vinay427 | Hacker News Reader

The median income of a household with a car in the city is more than double that of households without cars [1]. In a city where public transport is a viable and relatively cheap alternative, it doesn’t seem obvious that it disproportionately impacts the poor, unlike for instance a flat sales tax on essential goods.

[1] https://blog.tstc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/how-car-fre...

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If they only taxed passenger vehicles you'd have a point, but the cost for trucks is actually higher (up to more than double), which means that in the end it is a tax on essential goods, because those goods have to make it into the city somehow and businesses have to pass that cost on to customers. It's reasonable to be afraid that poor customers will see the largest change as a percent of their budget as prices go up to pay for the tax (though obviously we haven't had time to measure whether that to see for sure).

It disproportionately impacts the working lower classes. Poor in NYC likely means homeless. Dual income McDonalds working family is above the CarLess HHI median wage in the reports you linked. That same worker is heavily impacted by congestion pricing vs say a Quant trader

17$/hr * 50hrs/week * 52weeks/year * 2 earners = 88.5k/year

The dual income McDonalds worker was never driving into Manhattan. Though the fixation on “poor people” is fake. 100 studies could come out explaining that congestion pricing is better for poor people and the opponents aren’t going to change their view on it. It’s a fake argument used to launder more selfish opinions.

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